Peeps at People Part 3

"As you will, Princess," he replied. "To begin with, we were born--"

"Pardon me, sire," I interrupted. "But I know all about your history."

"They study us in your schools, do they? Ah, well, they do rightly,"

said the Emperor, with a wink of satisfaction at himself in the gla.s.s.

"They indeed do rightly to study us. When one considers what we are the result of! Far back, Princess, in the days of Thor, the original plans for William Second were made. This person, whom we have the distinguished and sacred honor to be, was contemplated in the days when chaos ruled. G.o.ds have dreamed of him; G.o.ddesses have sighed for him; epochs have shed bitter tears because he was not yet; and finally he is here, in us--incarnate sublimity that we are!"

The Emperor thumped his chest proudly as he spoke, until the gold on his uniform fairly rang.

"Are we--ah--are we appreciated in America?" he asked.

"To the full, Emperor--to the full!" I replied, instantly. "I do not know any country on the face of this grand green earth where you are quoted more often at your full value than with us."

"And--ah," he added, with a slight coyness of manner--"we are--ah--supposed to be at what you Americans call par and a premium, eh?"

"Emperor," said I, "you are known to us as yourself."

"Madame--or rather Princess," he cried, ecstatically, "you could not have praised us more highly."

He touched an electric b.u.t.ton as he spoke, and instantly a b.u.t.tons appeared.

"The iron cross!" he cried.

"Not for me--oh, sire--not for me?" said I, almost swooning with joy.

"No, Princess, not for you," said the Emperor. "For ourself. We shall give you one of the b.u.t.tons off our imperial coat. It is our habit every morning at this hour to decorate our imperial self, and we have rung for the usual thing just as you Americans would ring for a Manhattan c.o.c.ktail."

"What!" I cried, wondering at the man's marvellous acquaintance with the slightest details of American life. "You know the--Manhattan c.o.c.ktail?"

"Princess," said the Emperor, proudly, "we know everything."

And this was the man they call Willie-boy in London!

"Emperor," said I, "about the part.i.tion of China?"

"Well," said he, "what of the part.i.tion of China?"

"Is it to be part.i.tioned?"

The Emperor's eye twinkled.

"We have not yet read the morning papers, Princess," he said. "But we judge, from what we saw in the society news of last night's _Fliegende Choynal_, that there will be a military ball at Peking shortly, and that the affair will end brilliantly with a--ah--a German."

"Good!" said I. "And you will really fight England?"

"Why not?" said he, with a smile at the looking-gla.s.s.

"Your grandmother?" I queried, with a slight shake of my head, in deprecation of a family row.

"She calls us Billie!" he cried, pa.s.sionately. "Grandmothers can do a great many things, Princess, but no grandmother that Heaven ever sent into this world shall call us Billie with impunity."

I was silent for a moment.

"Still, Emperor," I said, at last, "England has been very good to you.

She has furnished you with all the coal your s.h.i.+ps needed to steam into Chinese waters. Surely that was the act of a grandmother. You wouldn't fight her after that?"

"We will, if she'll lend us ammunition for our guns," said the Emperor, gloomily. "If she won't do that, then of course there will be no war.

But, Princess, let us talk of other things. Have you heard our latest musical composition?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE IMPERIAL BAND]

I frankly confessed that I had not, and the imperial band was called up and ordered to play the Emperor's new march. It was very moving and made me somewhat homesick; for, after all, with all due respect to William's originality, it was nothing more than a slightly Prussianized rendering of "All c.o.o.ns Look Alike to Me." However, I praised the work, and added that I had heard nothing like it in Wagner, which seemed to please the Emperor very much. I have since heard that as a composer he resents Wagner, and attributes the success of the latter merely to that accident of birth which brought the composer into the world a half-century before William had his chance.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'WE ARE HAVING OUR PORTRAITS PAINTED'"]

"And now, Princess," he observed, as the music ceased, "your audience is over. We are to have our portrait painted at mid-day, and the hour has come. a.s.sure your people of our undying regard. You may kiss our little finger."

"And will not your Majesty honor me with his autograph?" I asked, holding out my book, after I had kissed his little finger.

"With pleasure," said he, taking the book and complying with my request as follows:

"Faithfully your War Lord and Master,

"ME."

Wasn't it characteristic!

MR. ALFRED AUSTIN

It was on a beautiful March afternoon that I sought out the Poet-Laureate of England in his official sanctum in London. A splendid mantle of fog hung over the street, shutting out the otherwise all too commercial aspect of that honored by-way. It was mid-day to the stroke of the hour, and a soft mellow glare suffused the perspective in either direction, proceeding from the gas-lamps upon the street corners, which, like the fires of eternal youth, are kept constantly burning in the capital city of the Guelphs.

I approached the lair of England's first poet with a beating heart, the trip-hammer-like thudding of which against my ribs could be heard like the pounding of the twin screws of an Atlantic liner far down beneath the folds of my mackintosh. To stand in the presence of Tennyson's successor was an ambition to wish to gratify, but it was awesome, and not a little difficult for the nervous system. However, once committed to the enterprise, I was not to be baffled, and with shaking knees and tremulous hand I banged the brazen knocker against the door until the hall within echoed and re-echoed with its clangor.

Immediately a window on the top story was opened, and the laureate himself thrust his head out. I could dimly perceive the contour of his n.o.ble forehead through the mist.

"Who's there, who's there, I fain would know, Are you some dull and dunning dog?

Are you a friend, or eke a foe?

I cannot see you through the fog,"

said he.

"I am an American lady journalist," I cried up to him, making a megaphone of my two hands so that he might not miss a word, "and I have come to offer you seven dollars a word for a glimpse of you at home."

"How much is that in _s_. _d_.?" he asked, eagerly.